


Amfortas! Die Wunde

by EnricoDandolo



Series: History is our mother [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Parsifal - Wagner
Genre: Alexa play the Tristan chord, Angst, F/F, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Pining, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, gratuitous use of Wagner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnricoDandolo/pseuds/EnricoDandolo
Summary: Marian had always known something inside her was broken.
Relationships: Bethany Hawke/Female Hawke
Series: History is our mother [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/269605
Kudos: 11





	Amfortas! Die Wunde

**Author's Note:**

> Low-key set in my modern AU, though outside its canon. Despite the quotes and the questionable fandom tag, this has heavy Tristan feels.

_Die Wunde sah ich bluten,_

_nun blutet sie in mir!_

_Hier - hier!_

_Nein! Nein! Nicht die Wunde ist es._

_Fließe ihr Blut in Strömen dahin!_

_Hier! Hier im Herzen der Brand!_

_Das Sehnen, das furchtbare Sehnen,_

_das alle Sinne mir fasst und zwingt!_

_Oh! - Qual der Liebe!_

_Wie alles schauert, bebt und zuckt_

_in sündigem Verlangen!_

| 

_I saw the wound bleeding:_

_now it bleeds in me!_

_Here – here!_

_No, no! It is not the wound._

_Flow in streams, my blood, from it!_

_Here! Here in my heart is the flame!_

_The longing, the terrible longing_

_which seizes and grips all my senses!_

_O torment of love!_

_How all trembles, quakes, and quivers_

_in sinful desire!_

(R. Wagner, _Parsifal,_ act II)  
  
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Marian had always known she was broken.

The Beast had been there, burrowing inside her heart, as long as she could recall. Always there, hideous to behold, a demon of her very own. She could hear its whispers when her eyes slipped, soft and comforting to the drumroll of her heart. She could feel it tugging at her insides, dragging out her every organ until she was a hollow vessel for its awful desire. She could feel it burning away at her, searing sweet and hot inside her nethers whenever skin brushed innocently against skin.

It had always been there, a parasite bent on controlling her, on making her its creature, as vile and abhorrent as the Beast itself. And every day, she did battle with it.

She wasn’t winning the war. But she hadn’t lost a battle yet, and that was all that mattered.

When she first learned of the Beast, she’d been a kindergartener. She doesn’t remember how, exactly—she remembers autumn sunlight warm in her hair, colourful crayons. Just quietly drawing, humming to herself, for once giving the teacher some peace. She must have worked on that drawing a long time, she remembers that—remembers her pride when she showed it to the teacher, the two pretty brides in white gowns, smiling hand in hand.

The teacher had laughed, quietly to herself, and gone to her knee. Told her that it was a very sweet painting, but it wasn’t quite right, was it? Perhaps she’d like to add a nice groom for each of them, a handsome prince? She’d understand once she got older.

So by the time mother picked her up that day, little Marian had scrunched up the drawing and thrown it away.

She doesn’t remember the names of her friends at elementary school, but she does remember the looks they gave her. She’s not sure how it started, or when—only knows that they, too, had noticed the Beast, and were afraid of it. She remembers the frowns, then the mocking comments, the snide jokes. _You’re such a weirdo, Marian._ She laughed it off, all of it, and made sure the comments stopped. There was no language ten-year-old boys understood as well as a sliver of a ten-year-old girl biting, scratching and kicking. What she lacked in size, she more than made up for in viciousness.

Sometimes, even years later, the teasing would return—some chance gesture, some overly intense look, some ill-considered choice of words, the Beast churning within her. _This is so you, Marian._ Part of her wanted to scream, no, no, it wasn’t, she was _fine_ and _normal_. Instead, she smiled, and laughed it off, and changed the subject, while inside her the Beast chuckled.

Her first boyfriend—Devan? Dennan? something like that—was a sweet kid. They were twelve, maybe thirteen, and they were on the school football team together. Marian barely remembers his face, but she does remember a shock of hair the colour of an overripe carrot. She’d caught him staring at her, turning red whenever she noticed, and one day he’d stammered out something about getting burgers to her boots.

She froze.

There was no word for the nausea that came over her in the long seconds that followed. The Beast roared. Every fibre of her being screamed for her to run, to fight.

She bit her tongue and said yes.

After Dennan (Devan?) there was Maric, and Aydin, and Huon, and—she doesn’t remember. They pass by in a blur in her memories, none lasting longer than a couple months—her mother took to referring to them as “interchangeable Edwins” at some point. She could not give them what they want, try as she might.

She did get better, though, training herself to accept their affections. When they tried to kiss her, she no longer recoiled. One of them—she can’t quite recall his name—she let fuck her. A few minutes of staring up at the ceiling while he pumped away at her, hands here, mouth there, penis there again. _I’m enjoying this_ , she told herself, a mantra to drown out the Beast.

She’d close her eyes, and the boys before or inside her would change, soften, sweeten, and every time the Beast would drive her closer towards the edge before she could tear open her eyes, gasp out, reassert herself. _I’m enjoying this. This is normal._ Then why did she hate herself so?

She could not deny the effects the Beast had on her body, but she’d be damned (literally) if she didn’t fight them.

By the time she was sixteen, Marian had self-discipline down to a science. She played in three sports teams after school. In between training sessions, she ran, for hours at a time with no regard for storm or strain. The exertion numbed her senses, burnt away whatever energy she might otherwise have spent self-abusing, or worse. When that wasn’t enough, she drank, smoked, had sex—whatever it took to distract herself, to keep the Beast in check for another hour. She wasn’t quite flogging herself like a penitent Chantry sister, but she’d developed a habit of subtly digging her nails into her skin or scratching herself whenever she caught herself paying tribute to the Beast within her. The pain usually dispelled whatever foul notions it had implanted in her before long.

Besides, a little blood was a small price to pay.

She had never believed in the Maker’s grace. What kind of benevolent god would make her like this, broken from the start, and make her live with these desires?

And yet, in the dark of night, when she sank her teeth into her pillow to keep from screaming out, she prayed. Prayed for strength to fight the Beast, prayed for release, prayed for death.

She didn’t wait for the recruiting officer’s sales pitch before asking for the enlistment papers. It was her seventeenth birthday.

Explaining her decision was the hardest thing she’d ever done, and it took her weeks until she finally confessed what she had done. She knelt in the study, mumbling something unsatisfactory, watching the tears and trying not to break down herself. It was the eve of father’s funeral.

She tried to make excuses, but of course she couldn’t take this away from them. None of them deserved this, it wasn’t their fault she was broken. They accompanied her to the station. She was in tears, and Marian wanted nothing more than to give in to the Beast right there and then.

She had to get away from her, she reminded herself. That was all that mattered. She smiled, waved, and got on the train.

Ostagar is madness, a conflagration of waking nightmares. The tastes of blood, vomit and mud, the smells of gore, decay and taint—all blend together in her memories. For the first time in her life, though, her dreams are, if not pleasant, at least free of the Beast’s illusions. She dreams of her still, she suspects she always will, but it is the darkspawn disease that now distorts her dream-image, not Marian’s own horrid hunger.

She tries to imagine her own fall, struck down by a tainted musket ball or blade. She doesn’t much care for king and country, but she can’t think of anything sweeter and more fitting than to die for her despite the Beast.

She does not get her wish. When the line collapses, she flees north, possessed only by the atavistic urge to protect what is (not, never can be) hers. The moment she sees her again, the Beast she thought defeated is back, and when she embraces her, she can scarce tear herself away again. Templars and demons, soldiers and darkspawn—none of it matters for those few, blissful moments that would earn her hatred and revulsion on top of everlasting damnation if the Beast had its way.

She is warm, and firm. There is nothing they cannot do.

Ringing in her ears.

Lead. Iron. Gun oil under her fingernails, mixing with blood.

Grey sky, grey land, grey ogre speckled red.

Her ears—

She stumbles over, like one who walks across a room in a shuttered house naked and unwatched. She kneels.

She stares blankly. Takes her hand. Cold. She wants to kiss her even now.

The Beast chuckles darkly. Tip of the hat, bow and curtain. It departs. She has won. She is free.

“… Bethany?”

_Nun banne das Bangen,_

_holder Tod,_

_sehnend verlangter_

_Liebestod!_

_In deinen Armen,_

_dir geweiht,_

_urheilig Erwarmen,_

_von Erwachens Not befreit!_

| 

_Now banish dread,_

_sweet death,_

_yearned for, longed for_

_death-in-love!_

_In your arms,_

_consecrated to you,_

_sacred elemental quickening force,_

_free from the peril of waking!_

(R. Wagner, _Tristan und Isolde_ , act II)  
  
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